| #### Chapter 38 |

| #### #### And yet this "He Is" does not truly apply: the Supreme has no need of Being: even "He is good" does not apply since it indicates Being: the "is" should not suggest something predicated of another thing; it is to state identity. The word "good" used of him is not a predicate asserting his possession of goodness; it conveys an identification. It is not that we think it exact to call him either good or The Good: it is that sheer negation does not indicate; we use the term The Good to assert identity without the affirmation of Being. #### But how admit a Principle void of self-knowledge, self-awareness; surely the First must be able to say "I possess Being?" #### But he does not possess Being. Then, at least he must say "I am good?" No: once more, that would be an affirmation of Being. But surely he may affirm merely the goodness, adding nothing: the goodness would be taken without the being and all duality avoided? #### No: such self-awareness as good must inevitably carry the affirmation "I am the Good"; otherwise there would be merely the unattached conception of goodness with no recognition of identity; any such intellection would inevitably include the affirmation "I am." #### If that intellection were the Good, then the intellection would not be self-intellection but intellection of the Good; not the Supreme but that intellection would be the Good: if on the contrary that intellection of the Good is distinct from the Good, at once the Good exists before its knowing; all-sufficiently good in itself, it needs none of that knowing of its own nature. #### Thus the Supreme does not know itself as Good. As what then? No such foreign matter is present to it: it can have only an immediate intuition self-directed. ####  |